I'm Not Scared [Paperback]

Niccolo Ammaniti (Author), Jonathan Hunt (Translator)

Book Description

Release date: February 24, 2004

“Stop all this talk about monsters, Michele. Monsters don’t exist. It’s men you should be afraid of, not monsters.”

A sweltering heat wave hits a tiny village in Southern Italy, sending the adults to seek shelter, while their children bicycle freely throughout the countryside, playing games and getting into trouble. On a dare, nine-year-old Michele Amitrano enters an old, abandoned farmhouse, where he stumbles upon a secret so terrible that he can’t tell anybody. As the truth emerges, Michele learns that the horror in the creepy old house is closer to home than he ever imagined.

A widely acclaimed international bestseller, I’m Not Scared is a spine-tingling novel that combines a coming of age narrative with a satisfying, enthralling story of suspense.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This gripping American debut by Italian novelist Ammaniti captures well the vagaries of childhood: the shifting alliances, the casual betrayals and the mix of helplessness and earnest audacity with which children confront adult situations. Nine-year-old Michele Amitrano lives with his little sister, devoted mother and distant father in a rural Italian hamlet consisting of five dilapidated houses. In the sweltering summer of 1978, he and a group of his friends strike out on their bikes across the barren, scorched hills. While exploring an abandoned house, Michele discovers what he believes to be the dead body of a boy his own age. He cannot bring himself to tell his friends. When he tries to tell his father, the elder Amitrano brushes him off. Drawn back to the site, Michele discovers that the boy is not dead, but weak, disoriented and unable to account for his presence there. Michele brings the boy food and water and slowly learns more about him. The boy's story-which includes kidnapping and ransom-are too much for a nine-year-old to fathom and involve virtually every adult in the tiny community. Yet Michele decides that he must do something to help the boy. Part mystery, part morality play, the novel is written in simple, spare prose. The characters, particularly that of Michele, spring to life, and the story builds to a heart-stopping climax. Readers will find this accomplished work hard to put down and even harder to forget.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Ammaniti is one of Italy's most acclaimed younger writers, and this carefully constructed thriller is the first of his books to appear here. During a piercingly hot summer, a few kilometres from a bone-dry hamlet in rural Tuscany, a shy, nervy, nine-year-old boy called Michele explores a derelict house and discovers, under moldering leaves, a horrifying secret. The novel is saved from sensationalism by Ammaniti's almost cinematic ability to conjure detail—the look of scraps of meat on a plate, the sheen of a new bike, the whispers of adults in the night—and by his utterly convincing re-creation of a child's perspective, as Michele's discovery propels him into ever more uncertain territory.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (February 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400075637
• ISBN-13: 978-1400075638
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #203,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A modern day parable October 7, 2003

By Jessica Ferguson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Told through the thoughts and views of a young boy, I'm Not Scared is a searing look at the struggles and truths of childhood morality, the formidable situations many children's parents force them to face, and the untimely death of childhood trust and safety. Jonathan Hunt has translated Niccolo Ammaniti's disturbing story beautifully, capturing the hard realities of desperate and self-righteous people along with the sinister and surreal atmosphere that slowly descends around Michele and his family. A difficult book to discuss without revealing plot lines and endings, Ammaniti has, in an unusual sense, written a compelling psychological thriller and has created a story that does not end with the printed page but within the reader's own imagination.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Non avere paura di crescere December 2, 2003

By Andrew Rasanen

Format:Hardcover

I, too, read the novel in Italian and have not seen the English translation. In Italian, at least, it's an intelligent, well crafted, exciting story with beautiful language and some real edge-of-your-seat scenes. The immature perspective of the unsophisticated, underinformed boy Michele (remembered by his adult self, who narrates) is very believable. I liked how the concept of not being afraid is inserted in several different aspects, among more than one character. The contrast between the seemingly pristine surface world of endless golden wheat and the filthy conditions inside the dark hole in the ground creates a perfect metaphor for a story that, in the end, is about not being afraid to grow up, for that is what Michele does, voluntarily leaving behind the innocence of childhood to enter the shadowier moral world of "i grandi," the grownups. The novel has been made into a movie in Italy that I saw recently on DVD. Like most movies, it simplifies the plot and alters the ending somewhat, but it follows the novel fairly closely. The all-important role of Michele was well cast, and the vast dreamy landscape was made a virtual character in the story.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Some real life in 70s Italy October 27, 2003

By Vittorio Caffè

Format:Hardcover

Loose ends? Where? Obviously I read the novel in Italian--being Italian myself--and loved the book. Now I'm glad English-reading people may read it and posslibly love it too. The novel is tight and has a perfectly wrought plot mechanism. Ammaniti does not explain everything, but on a second reading all that was not explained becomes clear. But what is important is the atmosphere of those years, when all those of us (Italians) who lived in rural areas felt that living there meant being imprisoned in a medieval world, and that everything good was to be found in big cities. That feeling is wonderfully rendered in the novel and that's what I like most. As for kidnapping yeah, it was a major industry for some regions of the Deep South (namely Calabria) and yeah, sometime whole smalltowns or villages were involved. And then the vipers, well, what's the problem? We don't have rattlesnakes and copperheads in Italy (luckily!), so everybody knows the only dangerous snake is the viper--and that's the snake everybody knows and is afraid of. Anyway, enjoy this novel... it is much better than Benigni's stale comedy, or musty stereotypes of mandolin-playing captains...